agnanimity to remember the idle pranks of
childhood against any one. Why, see what a handsome, glorious looking
girl she is now."

Mittie turned haughtily away, and stepped out on the mossy door-stone.
All her early scorn and hatred of Miss Thusa revived with even added
force. Clinton followed her, but lingered on the threshold for Louis,
whose hand the ancient sibyl grasped with a cordial farewell pressure.

"Mittie and I never were friends, and never can be," said she, "but I
wish her no harm. I wish her better luck than I think is in her path
now. As for yourself, if you should get into trouble, and not want to
vex those that are kin, you can come to me, and if you don't despise my
counsel and assistance, perhaps it may do you good. I have a legend that
I've been storing up for your ears, too, and one of these days I should
like to tell it to you. But," lowering her voice to a whisper, "leave
that long-haired, smooth-tongued gentleman behind."

"Was I not right," said Mittie, when they had passed the stile, and
could no longer discern the ancestral figure of Miss Thusa in the door
of her lonely dwelling, "in saying that she is a very rude, disagreeable
person? She is so vindictive, too. She never could forgive me, because
when a little child I cared not to listen to her terrible tales of
ghosts and monsters. Helen believed every word she uttered, till she
became the most superstitious, fearful creature in the world."

"You should add, the sweetest, dearest, best," interrupted Louis,
"unless we except the angelic blind maiden."

"I should think if you had any affection for me, Louis," said Mittie,
turning pale, as his praises of Helen fell on Clinton's ear, "you would
resent the rudeness and impertinence to which you have just exposed me.
What must your friend think of me? Was it to lower me in his opinion
that you carried him to her hovel, and drew forth her spiteful and
bitter remarks?"

"Do you think it possible that _she_ could alter my opinion of _you_?"
said Clinton, in a low, earnest tone. "If any thing could have exalted
it, it would be the dignity and forbearance with which you bore her
insinuations, and defeated her malice."

"I am sorry, Mittie," cried Louis, touched by her paleness and emotion,
and attributing it entirely to wounded feeling, "I am very sorry that I
have been the indirect cause of giving you pain. It was certainly
unintentional. Miss Thusa was in rather a savage mood this evening, I